It is not live for all at this point, but the fact that it is rolling out to large numbers of Twitter’s userbase suggests that a full rollout is coming soon. We contacted Twitter for comment but — unsurprisingly, given that it is New Year’s Eve — did not receive a response at the time of writing. [Update: Twitter declined to comment.]

‘While you were away’ works much like Facebook’s Timeline and is the first major non-chronological feature to hit Twitter. Back in November, the company said it would look at the ‘best’ tweets from your network since you last opened Twitter, and put them at the top of your timeline so you don’t miss them.

“Every time you open the Twitter app, you’ll see something great,” it said of the new feature, which was announced at the same time as ‘instant timeline’, which is expected to arrive on the service in early 2015.

The algorithm that Twitter uses to source your ‘best’ tweets from your friends is crucial to its success. As someone who doesn’t use Twitter every minute of every day, I’d appreciate a recap but only if it is able to surface content that is relevant and interesting to me.

There are already some services that exist solely to do that, while Twitter has email alerts for the purpose too.

Nuzzel, for example, taps into your Facebook and Twitter network to surface news stories and other items that are popular with people you know. I’m skeptical that Twitter’s feature can be as effective, particularly since it only serves up a single tweet and that takes up precious real-estate at the top of your feed.